Bielefelder thread!!!!

[NuggetMama]

Here is my older girl and why I got this “bright” idea.. we are going to have her culled because if the eye gets injured I can’t afford to take her to the vet to have it removed. I love her so much i can’t see her suffer.

Ares a month ago:

Ares today:

As I said. This runs in only my Bielefelder and Bielefelder NN’s that are fully feathered.

My leghorns, Australorps, Aloha NN’s, Cemani, Cemani Alohas and all my bantams are free of this. So it’s not an illness or environmental.

 

[My Three Chicks]

My Bielee turns 5 months today! She's huge weighing in at 5.64 lbs. (Compared to her Ameraucana sister who is only 4.4 lbs.)
She's a sweetie thru-and-thru. Lowest on the pecking order (although everyone gets along well and no one gets harassed much). She's also my little nap buddy. As soon as I sit down she's there to greet me and join me. I'm so in love with this little angel. Amazing breed!

 

[Awaytome]

15 weeks old. They are exploring and taking over the yard, jumping up to grab currants and rose hips (very cute) but they get chased out of the blueberries.

 

[Sally PB]

15 weeks. Sunny has an interesting topknot growing.

 

[BlueBaby]

15 weeks. Sunny has an interesting topknot growing.
View attachment 3626293

Maybe she will give you a big egg like one of my Bielefelder's gave me today. It was even bigger then the fake ceramic egg that I have out in the nesting box.

 

[BlueBaby]

I went ahead and cracked it open. It was a double yolker

 

[My Three Chicks]

I went ahead and cracked it open. It was a double yolker

View attachment 3633722

Cool! No wonder if was huge! How old is she? When did she start laying?

 

[Ponypoor]

You know, I don't think you'd have to go so far as to recreate it, I think you could just breed in a chicken with similar traits and then cross the offspring together, or breed the offspring back to a different Bielefelder, etc. You'd have something that was a high percentage of Bielefelder blood pretty quickly, and it would look like a Bielefelder.

You'd just want to find something with a similar comb, similar egg color, similar body type, etc, in order to shorten the number of generations needed to achieve your goal. If that was done periodically you'd have a good selection of additional blood.

On the other hand, studies have shown that chickens can be inbred for a LOT of generations before ill effects are shown. So maybe that's why no one has done this?

Or, one could import breeding animals from Germany. I seriously thought of asking my horse vet to bring me a breeding trio back for me next time he made a trip there with horses.

Chicken math has a firm grip on me it seems

 

[BlueBaby]

Cool! No wonder if was huge! How old is she? When did she start laying?

She was hatched on February 18th of last year, and started laying in August of last year. She hatched out of my batch of shipped hatching egg's sent from Granbury, TX.

 

[My Three Chicks]

She was hatched on February 18th of last year, and started laying in August of last year. She hatched out of my batch of shipped hatching egg's sent from Granbury, TX.

Ah so she's been laying for a while. I thought double-yolkers were something more common in new layers.
My Bielee is a little over 5 months so we're still waiting...